


the yellow road lies sleeping

by elanne



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanne/pseuds/elanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how the world ends: the arch of her neck, her head thrown back proud and familiar, true to generations of a noble house before it fell into ruin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the yellow road lies sleeping

This is how the world ends: the arch of her neck, her head thrown back proud and familiar, true to generations of a noble house before it fell into ruin. Not like this, Remus begs, please not like this – the sudden pause, the limp curve of her hand, the fall – because he has been here before, and life could not be so cruel as to take someone from him this way a second time.

(Sirius fell the same way, silent and surprised and suddenly over; the world ended then, too.)

Life has already proved itself cruel – in his heart are whispers of a house in ruins, a child who cries with blood on his forehead. Today the world is a shuddering mess of blood and tears, marble halls too silent, death too crowded. Some choice has brought them here, to where her body lies proud and still and fallen on the floor; some choice made yesterday, or a thousand years ago, or not made at all. (The moonlight in the window was enchanting – he wanted to pick up the white stones that were in the grass, glowing.)

Once, the future was a marvelous thing to be caught and tamed, and Remus was just one of four, young and brilliant and _together._ Life was quick and bright and beautiful, because sixteen means long legs and skipping class and never knowing how young you really are. Sometimes when Remus closes his eyes he can see it like images from another life, all bony wrists and asking girls out in the hallways, and how Sirius never admitted to stealing Remus' socks and James kept trying to pretend that Lily wasn't taller than him. He doesn't think about Peter now, at the end, but of the way James smiled with just one side of his mouth, of how Sirius couldn't sleep with the window closed.

Later it was just the two of them, he and Sirius; they both were damaged and they loved a damaged boy with a promise carved onto his forehead, no longer bleeding. They lived and they fought and, in a new sort of way, they were happy; they pretended not to notice the scars on Remus' face or the breakable fragility of Sirius' wrists. If maybe the future was not so wide anymore, if maybe they understood loss too well, hope became the thought of warm feet and tea by the fireplace, of spending the rest of their lives stealing each other's socks, of finding home.

Afterwards came Tonks; under her bright hair she had the proud face of a Black, and Remus tried not to remember how much she looked like Sirius once upon a time, before. She needed comfort as much as he did and so he almost forgot how young she was, or maybe he let himself forget because of the way her neck curved, her voice when she said his name. With Tonks there were burnt meals and standing watch in the rain and remembering how to laugh, and with her the world came back together, if only a little. And if sometimes it was Sirius he saw looking out of her eyes when she talked about changing the world, Remus never told her that he had looked like that once, too.

Beginnings are difficult. They come when the world is fresh – once upon a time in a far off land lay a thousand possibilities, apple-ripe and shining gold.

Endings are easy.

His life has been a series of endings; a childhood in the glow of the full moon, a friendship in the shambles of a house he had loved. Every time the world ends he waits for it to be over, but each time he finds himself left standing among the ashes; some ironic twist of fate has left him a survivor, the only one remaining to pick up the pieces.

Each time there are fewer pieces to pick up; now he looks at his wife's bright, fallen body, and thinks that this time there may be nothing left at all. He goes on fighting because his wand is in his hand, because it is the only thing he knows how to do, because he has a son, because it is right.

This is how the world ends: a tired face, a raised wand, a fall.

(The secret is that there are no endings, not really.)

Death comes gentle as a whisper, the embrace of a friend long missing, a welcome home.


End file.
